"A. E. Van Vogt - The Rat & the Snake & Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

ago we had a thousand methods of limiting atomic explosions."
He paused, then even more slowly, "I have never heard of an
instrument that counts out atoms for such a purpose."
"And yet," murmured Shuri, the astronomer, breathlessly,
"the race was destroyed."
There was silence. It ended as Gorsid said to the nearest
guard, "Kill the monster!"
But it was the guard who went down, bursting into flame.
Not just one guard, but the guards! Simultaneously down,
burning with a blue flame. The flame licked at the screen,
recoiled, and licked more furiously, recoiled and burned
brighter. Through a haze of fire, Enash saw that the man
had retreated to the far door, and that the machine that
counted atoms was glowing with a blue intensity.
Captain Gorsid shouted into his communicator, "Guard all
exits with ray guns. Spaceships stand by to kill alien with
heavy guns."
Somebody said, "Mental control. Some kind of mental con-
trol. What have we run into?"
They were retreating. The blue flame was at the ceiling,
struggling to break through the screen. Enash had a last
glimpse of the machine. It must still be counting atoms, for it
was a hellish blue. Enash raced with the others to the room
where the man had been resurrected. There, another energy
screen crashed to their rescue. Safe now, they retreated into
their separate bubbles and whisked through outer doors and
up to the ship. As the great ship soared, an atomic bomb
hurtled down from it. The mushroom of flame blotted out the
museum and the city below.
"But we still don't know why the race died," Yoal whis-
pered into Enash's ear, after the thunder had died from the
heavens behind them.
The pale yellow sun crept over the horizon on the third
morning after the bomb was dropped, the eighth day since the
landing. Enash floated with the others down on a new city.
He had come to argue against any further revival.
"As a meteorologist," he said, "I pronounce this planet safe
for Ganae colonization. I cannot see the need tor taking any
risks. This race has discovered the secrets of its nervous sys-
tem, and we cannot afford"
He was interrupted. Hamar, the biologist, said dryly, "If
they knew so much why didn't they migrate to other star
systems and save themselves?"
"I will concede," said Enash, "that very possibly they had
not discovered our system of locating stars with planetary
families." He looked earnestly around the circle of his friends.
"We have agreed that was a unique accidental discovery.
We were lucky, not clever."
He saw by the expressions on their faces that they were
mentally refuting his arguments. He felt a helpless sense